An inspired wordsmith

Playwright and social commentator Vijay Tendulkar, who passed away 10 years ago, called a wrestling match between Dara Singh and Randhawa &ldquo;one of the finest pieces of theatre&rdquo;

By
Shanta Gokhale

Time flies. It will be 10 years this Sunday since Vijay Tendulkar left us, but not before bequeathing to us an invaluable legacy of powerful plays, essays, fiction and collections of columns that will last us well into the future. Where did these riches come from? He had no model to follow. He grew up in an age when the old Sangeet Natak had faded and a new theatre, more relevant to the times, was yet to be born. Some answers to this question may be found in his long essay, Majha Natyashikshan (‘My training in theatre’), where he identifies the sources which, he believes, fed his imagination.

Tendulkar’s father was an enthusiastic amateur theatre actor, writer and director. In those days anybody, even remotely connected with theatre, was seen as a drunk and a libertine. Respectable society, particularly in Pune, condemned it so severely that amateur groups had to rehearse in the town’s red light district. Tendulkar got his first glimpse of theatre watching his father rehearse. It wasn’t a glimpse that enthused him. People “just stood on the stage and said lines”. What caught his young imagination was cinema. He played hooky from school to watch Greta Garbo, Paul Muni, Greer Garson, Charles Laughton and other greats in films whose “themes, stories, scene construction, characterisation and most importantly, world-view” had a profound effect on him. Then he saw the Prabhat Studio film Manus, which proved that dialogue didn’t have to be melodramatic to create drama. The characters in Manus spoke naturally and still achieved great dramatic effect.

The power of theatre as theatre came to him in bits and pieces. His account of these experiences reveals the barrenness in which his genius was being forged. He watched Zunjarrao, the Marathi adaptation of Othello, under the open sky. Although the show was crowded, the audience’s attention to the dull events on stage was desultory. But then something happened that turned the disparate crowd of hundreds into a single body, heart and mind. The great veteran Baburao Pendharker walked onto the stage as Othello. Such was the actor’s haughty presence and stage poise, that the audience gasped together in wonderment. “The collective sigh that brought those hundreds to awed silence, was clear confirmation of the power of theatre,” writes Tendulkar. Another instance revealed what only theatre can do – compel an audience to suspend disbelief. Tendulkar was watching a lacklustre production of a play called Shri in which an ageing Nanasaheb Phatak, another veteran of the Marathi stage, was playing a youth of twenty. Phatak was performing with little interest in his role that the audience was growing restless, impatient and angry. Then came a scene in which the disciplinarian father of the youth berates him for having taken to crime.

The youth makes a long speech in self-defence, the gist of which is, “I was not like this. I did not want to become like this. But you have made me what I am.” Phatak’s speech, which had been halting till then, imperceptibly acquired a beguiling fluidity. “What we heard now wasn’t the old, gruff voice of earlier scenes. It was the tender voice of a young man giving way to a spontaneous cry of anguish. For the time being we forgot the tawdry set and production values of the play. All we heard was this young voice washing over us, wave upon wave.”

France’s great mime artist Marcel Marceau provided a silent lesson to Tendulkar who had often been accused of over-writing in his early years. Watching sad, happy, comic stories emerge from Marceau’s flexible body, clown-painted face and eloquent hands, a stunned Tendulkar lost faith in words. They seemed pitifully inadequate to him. After days spent thinking of words as verbiage, he modified Marceau’s lesson to his own purpose. He wrote sparse dialogue, allowing pauses and incomplete lines to suggest nuances of meaning.

It isn’t surprising that Tendulkar found drama in Kishori Amonkar’s music; but he found it in freestyle wrestling too. “I saw a fight between Dara Singh and Randhawa conducted in total silence. There were no shouted challenges, no whoops and cries. Just two muscled bodies vying silently for victory while the audience watched with bated breath. It was one of the finest pieces of theatre I had seen.”

Drawing upon such a varied range of sources, is it any wonder that Tendulkar gave us plays as diverse in theme, style, form and verbal texture as
Shantata! Court Chalu Ahe, Sakharam Binder and Ghashiram Kotwal?

Recent Messages ()

Please rate before posting your Review

OR PROCEED WITHOUT REGISTRATION

Share on Twitter

SIGN IN WITH

Refrain from posting comments that are obscene, defamatory or inflammatory, and do not indulge in personal attacks, name calling or inciting hatred against any community. Help us delete comments that do not follow these guidelines by marking them offensive. Let's work together to keep the conversation civil.